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Democratic Money Man Has Immunity From Starr

John Huang, a Democratic fund-raiser at the center of the 1996 campaign finance controversy, was granted immunity this year in exchange for his cooperation in another criminal case, Kenneth W. Starr's investigation of President Clinton's longtime Arkansas friend Webster L. Hubbell, law-enforcement officials said today.

Mr. Starr has long investigated Mr. Hubbell, formerly the No. 3 official in the Justice Department, for accepting fees of more than $700,000 in 1994 from friends and supporters of Mr. Clinton. At issue was whether Mr. Hubbell was paid for his silence about Mr. Clinton's actions in the Arkansas land deal that touched off Mr. Starr's inquiry.

As time passed, Mr. Starr shifted his attention to what some saw as parallel circumstances. In January, he began investigating Mr. Clinton's relationship with the White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky and accusations that he and associates helped Ms. Lewinsky find a job in New York in hopes of insuring that she would deny their affair in the Paula Jones sexual misconduct case.

It was revealed today that Mr. Huang, who funneled a $100,000 payment to Mr. Hubbell from an Indonesian banking family, received immunity from Mr. Starr this spring. The prosecutor agreed not to charge Mr. Huang with wrongdoing in exchange for information about Mr. Hubbell. A spokesman for Mr. Starr would not comment on the matter today.

Justice Department officials said the deal Mr. Starr struck with Mr. Huang would not protect him from prosecution in the Government's unrelated investigation of Mr. Huang's role in raising contributions for the Democrats in the 1996 election campaign. Mr. Huang raised more than $1 million, much of which was returned by the Democrats because the money originated from possibly suspect sources.

One official said that because the department's campaign finance investigators had been kept separate from investigators with the independent counsel's office, there was little danger that Mr. Huang's immunized testimony would seep into the campaign finance inquiry and undercut a Justice Department case against him.

Mr. Huang was among the Clinton allies who hired Mr. Hubbell after he left the Justice Department in 1994, when Mr. Hubbell was being investigated for cheating his former law firm of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mr. Huang paid $100,000 to Mr. Hubbell in June 1994 from the Riady family of Indonesia, which had employed Mr. Huang through its international business and banking operation, the Lippo Group. The Riadys are longtime supporters of Mr. Clinton.

Mr. Hubbell has acknowledged that he had received the money, but he refused to tell the Senate Whitewater Committee what he did in return for the payment. ''There wasn't anything improper about and nobody promised me a damned thing,'' he said in 1996.

Mr. Starr's office questioned Mr. Huang extensively shortly before Mr. Hubbell was indicted April 30 on charges of evading taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars in income. The indictment accused Mr. Hubbell of failing to pay taxes on money he received from Mr. Clinton's associates.

But a Federal judge, James Robertson, dismissed the tax charges against Mr. Hubbell. Mr. Starr is appealing the ruling.